Main market of solar in India

To really make an impact in an economically diverse nation as India, Solar has to approach the lower grass root levels. Grid connected plants are will have but a limited role. It has to provide solutions to individual households and reach into the Villages empowering the majority of the population. Barefoot College in Tilonia, Ajmer district acts an excellent example of potential of solar energy in India for wholly sustaining off grid communities. I think in the long run, I see solar energy becoming a consumer product for a middle class household.

The large, grid connected solar plants do not have a great future in India as the grid is too weak to support a significant ramp up of unscheduled power. Household level applications will play a role. They will be important to the individual household, but less significant in terms of contributing to the overall energy requirements of India. My guess is that captive solutions (actually also large captive solutions) for villages, cities, industries, areas will be the main application of solar. We will see local energy concepts which integrate solar with other locally available sources (and perhaps grid power).

After about a decade of wiring vast areas of populace with cables that provided poor quality pictures, amplifiers in between lost power, islanding a large no of consumers and generally leading to a poor user experience.

Same cycle is likely to repeat with solar power at the local level. The initial surge in home grown micro grids, pico grids, chargeable lanterns are likely to give way to individual household solar much like the way every home having a TV now has or aspires to have its own dish tv.

This shall be affordable and good quality solar products - not the ones assembled by local technicians - but mass manufactured, with warranty and service backup.

Medium sized solutions and individuals driving a demand for solar will be the real long term solution for India. Currently, demand is slowly rising, but because there are SO MANY options, zero understanding, and even less accountability for quality and service, the disconnects prevent us from really scaling this. An interesting discussion about the future of solar and government policy was focused on kerosene subsidies. Currently, kerosene is subsidized heavily, and therefore, still countering alternative options like purchasing solar utility, what if we evened the playing field and either got rid of subsidies all together, or offered the same level of subsidies giving the customer valid options. Additionally, as I have mentioned many times before, without long term service systems, and man power to maintain and manage these systems, we will not see long term sustainability of any of the options mentioned above.

- - - -> by: Shah

What is the efficiency diff between small scale and large scale in solar? Large scale power pants have more efficient inverters. How much %? And their output is then sent to the grid to be fed to the consumer. Against that what is the efficiency of the roof top plant? Does this difference take care of the losses even in good Grid. Have we calculated the economic cost of land?

India is facing scarcity in moonsoon and power has been diverted for irrigation in some states. Industry and businesses are turning on DG sets. How costly is this power? What if the power load is broken up and some of the linear loads are taken up by solar?
I think applications need to be sized in scale. The answer to some of these questions will make subsidy redundant.

- - - -> by: Mehta

Semi off grid mean where we have grid presence but with power cuts. The need for solar backup is not mandatory, so its feasibility is linked to grid parity. As I mentioned above effective cost of Solar backup power is high.

International market has seen either Off grid or grid connected inverters. The system design with Local inverter is not mature as it require more complex logic to balance between Solar PV, battery and grid.

- - - -> by: Mahesh

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